Well, this is sure to brighten up any PC gamer's day. While this will be pegged as “rumor” just because that's how things go, it's been factually proven with some undeniable evidence consisting of an e-mail from Valve Software stating the start dates of their Autumn and Winter holiday sales on Steam.

First up, full disclosure: Given the big trouble we found ourselves in when posting code from the leaked version of GTA V, the managing staff has prohibited us from directly linking to images or videos of a sensitive nature. We're also prohibited from re-creating, hosting or displaying said content on the site. Rockstar hit us with a cease and desist with a looming fine of $250,000 if we didn't immediately remove the images of the PC code from this article.

With all that said and done, let's get to the meat and potatoes. Based on an e-mail Valve sent out to pubs and devs, the Autumn Steam sale will begin on Wednesday, November 27th and will run to Tuesday, December 3rd. The Winter holiday sale will begin on December 19th, just in time for all the festive cheer and give-gifting sessions, and it will run up until Thursday, January 2nd. Again, the letter from Valve makes this explicitly clear. The letter also explains that developers and publishers will have to lock in discounts no later than November 15th using the Steam app data service, or else the discounts won't register.

A Reddit user going by the handle of ROU_Gravitas posted a thread about the leak of the Steam holiday sale start dates. The post contains an image of an e-mail that Valve's software support sent to a Russian developer who then decided to do what any newbie indie dev would do and he sent it out to people to spread the word, against the letter's advisement that the information was confidential.

The letter has spread quite far, enough so that many people are now well aware of the leak and Steam's holiday sales dates, especially after it ended up on a Russian equivalent of Facebook called VK.com, where Reddit user, MrFreemanBBQ noted on the thread that he runs the Steam page on VK, where the image was posted. Following the breadcrumbs, that would effectively make him a certain Vyacheslav Konchits?

Anyway, Konchits noted on VK., that...

From a man who wished to remain anonymous (and which, for some reason, decided to publish it on other sites, including reddit.com), sent us a screenshot of the letter that was sent out to publishers and developers Valve. # news @ steam # sale @ steam

Interesting that this chap decided to stay Anonymous. Many individuals also feel Valve is absolutely pissed about the leak given that it could really eat into potential pre-holiday spending habits. However, there is a short way of potentially finding out who may have been responsible for the leak.

First up, it's been established that the guy is a Russian or Ukrainian developer. Next up, we know that he's part of a group that has had their game greenlit on Steam, since only publishers are capable of changing prices in the backend and this guy being sent an e-mail directly from Valve and sharing it with the public obviously rules out that this is a title from a major publisher. In addition to this, the game already has to be greenlit so that it's eligible for being part of the Steam sale. That removes any game that is not already available on Steam but is greenlit.

Now following that criteria I almost thought about The Light, but again, we have to rule it out since it's not on Steam, so how can it get a discount if it's not available yet?

So basically, if Valve sent this to an indie dev who is native Russian and the first place the dev sent the pic to was a Russian social media site, it stands to reason that the game would support native Russian language.